A RIO-influenced Soviet prog rock band which managed to release a vinyl LP in 1985, when the vast majority of independent Soviet musicians still had no other way of distributing their music than tape trading... is it real? Yes it is! Although they officially weren't called a rock band, but a "chamber instrumental ensemble", but it doesn't matter.

Horizont was formed in 1978 initially as a classic art-rock band influenced by Yes, Genesis and ELP. However, by 1983-84 their sound increasingly started to resemble the Rock In Opposition bands like Univers Zero or SMM, even if calling them a RIO-style band still would be a stretch. Like in case with Хроноп (whom they aided a lot with recording their two albums in 1990-91), they were based in Cheboksary and sponsored by Promtractor, which allowed them to release two professionally recorded albums in 1985 and 1988. Sadly art-rock wasn't very popular at that time, so they went largely unnoticed, despite being released on a major label. That's a pity, because they seem to be the only RIO-influenced Soviet band (beside Джунгли / Jungle who were an obscure jazz-rock band formed in 1983 as a part of the Leningrad Rock Club).

Here's a good and detailed review of "Summer In Town" written by Ilya Prutov, who's certainly much more knowledgeable of prog-rock and RIO than me (click to enlarge):

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About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).